After the fall of the communist regime, Romanian accounting has undergone several waves of reforms. First, in the beginning of the nineties, a French-inspired chart and guidelines were adopted. Next, in 1999, Romanian accounting witnessed a reorientation towards the international accounting standards (IAS/IFRS). Last, in 2005, Romanian accounting regulators abandoned harmonization intents and issued regulations conforming to European Directives only.
The purpose of this paper is to capture the perception of the Romanian accounting regulators and professionals regarding the recent Romanian accounting reforms from the perspective of EU accession. By means of qualitative research methods, our paper aims at analyzing the grounds on which Romanian accounting was oriented towards IAS/IFRS, as well as analyzing the justification for this direction from a cost-benefit standpoint.
To gather data we interviewed the representatives of the national regulation bodies and the most prominent representatives of the accounting profession. The results showed that the decision to harmonize Romanian accounting with IAS/IFRS was not part of the EU accession strategy. It actually originated in an earlier process begun under the supervision of the British government, and imposed by international financing bodies. As harmonization regulations targeted a large number of companies without considering their implementation capacity, we comment on the perceptions of the accounting professionals, on the one side, and of the accounting regulators, on the other, regarding the cost and benefits of adopting the IAS/IFRS.